New Site is up and running!!!

Well, this is the last post on the blogspot site. My new site is here: Johnny's Take

I hope that you'll come visit the new site. I did the site myself, so it's a lot more work, but it's a lot more fun too.

Come check it out!

Stay strong and help someone else out today.

Johnny

Stumble It!

Consequences: It's never my fault!

Definition
Consequences: something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions

Some days I wish that I could pass blame for my life to someone, or something else. Trust me, I spent a good part of my life resting, in perfect peace, that my life was someone else's fault. My marriage was a mess because of the example that I had. I drank so much because I had to deal with all that guilt and shame that I had learned growing up. I gained so much weight because something was wrong with my body. All of those things were true, but not an excuse.

We are prepared for our adult life by a set of people that, most likely, had the same type of childhood that we did. If I'm not at fault for the adult life because of my parents, then how can my parents be held responsible? Did they not have parents too? My Grandparents are wonderful people, but they sucked as parents to my Mom. Great! That means that I can blame my Grandparents for my horrible choices! What? Oh. You're right, they had parents too. Then who in the hell am I supposed to blame?

How 'bout I blame the person responsible. What say I blame the person that ate anything and everything that he could get his hands on. I think that some blame goes to the person that was controlling and verbally abusive to his wife. Let's not forget to blame the guy that was guzzling whiskey from the bottle at six in the morning and would not stop until he blacked out or ran out of drink.

I did all those things. Me. I can't pass the buck any longer. I have to take personal responsibility for my life. Right now, it appears that I'm going to fall 'victim' to the economic woes of this world; I'm going to lose my house. Victim? I bought a house with no money down on an interest only loan for 5 years. Sound like a 'victim' to you? Me neither. It is me paying the consequences for making a poor decision.

Part of sobriety is placing the blame where it belongs. I can no longer afford to side-step my role in my own life. I make my own choices, I make my own decisions, and I pay for them; good or bad.

It feels good to take ownership. It feels good to feel horrible about the poor choices and to work through it. We hurt people along the way. When I own my actions, I can make amends and move on.

I am not a bad person, but I have made bad choices. All I can do it try to do the next 'right' thing.

Stay strong and help someone else out today.

Johnny

Stumble It!

The Twelve Rewards

I love the Twelve Rewards of Sobriety! It is a list of things that you can expect to see in your life if you follow some simple principles.

1. Faith instead of despair.
2. Courage instead of fear.
3. Hope instead of desperation.
4. Peace of mind instead of confusion.
5. Real friendships instead of loneliness.
6. Self-respect instead of self-contempt.
7. Self-confidence instead of helplessness.
8. A clean conscious instead of a sense of guilt.
9. The respect of others instead of their pity and contempt.
10. A clean pattern of living instead of a hopeless existence.
11. The love and understanding of our families instead of their doubts and fears.
12. The freedom of a happy life instead of the bondage of an alcoholic obsession.

Numbers 9 and 11 are among my favorites.

I was able to travel to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving this year to see my family. I had such a wonderful time. I honestly think that it was the best holiday that I can remember.

I received a call from my brother this week. Now, my older brother is my earthly hero. If someone were to compare me to him as a man, father, or a husband, I would be so honored. He called to tell me that the last couple of times that he has seen me he has noticed change in my life. He said that I seem at peace.

I have been sober for 5 and half years. I work daily on letting God run my life, cause I'm not very good at running my own. It was really wonderful to hear, from someone that I really respect, that my life is changing still. I'm not stagnant. That the rewards of living a life of sobriety that focuses on my daily contact with God are still coming.

Being sober is not enough for me. I want to live. I want to be the man that I am supposed to be. It is about progress and not perfection, but it sure is nice to see the progress, isn't it?

Every A.A. meeting ends with, "It works if you work it." I think that I will keep working it.

Stay strong and help someone else out today.

Johnny

Stumble It!

My Interview with the Junky's Wife

I had the opportunity to interview The Junky's Wife a couple of days ago and I wanted to share it with everyone.

Her and her husband had gone to the county detox to get him some help. Below is a snippet from her blog. The interview follows her writing. Those of you not addicted to a substance, keep this in mind; it is a monumental event when an addict seeks help. It may seem simple or sensible to you, but, let me assure you, that it is neither simple nor sensible to the addict. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to reach that point and then be turned away:

She handed him his discharge papers, and then she said, "I'm sorry, but we're not going to be able to help you. They can't take you at the county detox unless you get your methadone dose down to 30 milligrams. We recommend you go back to the methadone clinic and wean down according to their plan."

And that was it...no further suggestions for other resources. No attempts to help him with his suicidal threats. He began to cry, and he asked, "Is that it? There's nothing else? Nobody can help me? What if I kill myself? Can somebody help me with that?"

Now my interview with the wonderful blogger and amazing human being, The Junky's Wife. I'm grateful for the time she took to answer my questions.

Johnny: What was going through your mind when you were escorted from the place that should have been giving your family help?

The Junky's Wife: It was terrifying. For the first time, my husband was seeking help on his own...he's been places before to try to get help at my insistence, but this was the first time he'd really looked for himself. I'd hoped that his initiating the work would do the trick, and it was really upsetting to watch him treated like human trash. The doctors basically saw an uninsured, penniless addict, and the message they gave him was, "Go away and die, junky."

He went to two emergency rooms saying he felt like he was going to kill himself and that he needed help getting off drugs, and both places sent him away...I had hoped that it wasn't possible for these kinds of things to happen to people who wanted help, and I don't know if I would have believed it if I hadn't been there.


Johnny: If I were to '12 Step' your husband, what do you think the best approach would be?

The Junky's Wife: Respect that he's not got an option about his methadone maintenance. He's struggled around 12 step meetings because people have told him he's not clean if he's taking methadone and that he shouldn't be talking in meetings. He can't get off it at his dose, and he's not got any options other than to wean down according to his clinic's plan. He wants to be clean, and from what I understand, a desire to be clean is the only requirement for joining Narcotics Anonymous. He can't stay clean on his own, and N.A. shuns him...it's a situation a lot of heroin addicts who go the methadone route face, and it's a shame.

Rehab isn't an option in our state if you don't have money or health insurance and you need methadone. People at the methadone clinic don't tell you the whole story, and you don't find it out for yourself until you're too hooked on methadone to get off. My husband needs the support of a sponsor and the experience, strength, and hope of other addicts to be able to make it, and so far, he's not been able to find it. A little kindness and understanding and respect for the decisions he's made would go a long way.


Johnny: How will your writing change, if at all, WHEN your husband gets clean?

The Junky's Wife: I see my blog and its sister site The Junkies' Wives Club as part of my 12th step work. I am a writer by profession and by vocation, so I will never stop writing, and I don't foresee a time when my writing won't be a part of my recovery. I think I'd been in Nar-Anon for about a week when I started my blog, and it's become a real critical part of my journey. Sharing my story is part of my 12th step work...

I've also found it kind of interesting to watch the blog change as my focus has left my husband. At first, all I wrote about was him. I think I write a lot more about me now, and I expect the focus to continue to get clearer and clearer around my recovery and my issues.


Thanks again to the Junky's Wife, my prayers are with you and your husband. Everyone stay strong and help someone else out today.

Johnny

Stumble It!

Let Go, Let God...is it that easy?

"God is not moved by my tears, or by my fear. He is only moved by my faith."

That is what my younger brother, Justin, told me two nights ago. It was one of those weird statements that I heard and acknowledged, but it did not sit right. It hung in the back of my throat like a swallow of bad milk.

You mean that if I cry that God does not really care? When I am scared God moves on to listen to someone else?

It was not that I did not understand what Justin was saying. The problem was that, for the first time, I actually understood that statement.

In A.A. we use the term, "Let Go and Let God" quite a bit. What does that mean? It means have faith. I have to believe that God is on my side. I have to believe that if He is on my side then nobody and no "thing" can stand against me. I cannot claim to have faith and then be worried about what is going to happen to my home in this economy. I cannot say that I have faith then stress about what will happen to my job if GM goes bankrupt. I have to let it all go and let God do what he has promised. He is concerned for me and wants what is best for me, but what is best for me is to have complete faith that He will provide for me.

Justin made another comment that made perfect sense to me...for the first time ever. He said that, "fear is faith, just in the wrong thing." Faith is the belief in something not seen. Fear is a belief in something that most likely has not happened yet. So, when I fear for the future of my home, I am believing in something that I cannot see. I have faith in it.

I have come a long way in not worrying about my life, I have not perfected it, but I am making progress in the right direction. I have to let God do His part and I have to do mine. Mine is not to worry about anything, but in all things to give Him praise.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Johnny

Stumble It!

He is mine, you can't have Him...

Has the Church missed the mark? I think that the Church is an amazing thing and helps so many people find redemption, but I'm not sure it is exactly what God had in mind. I know too many Christians that are in an incredible amount of pain.

I am not even remotely implying that being a Christian makes you somehow immune to this life, but why isn't there more of a difference between Christians and Non-Christians? I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend. He said that a group has been studying things like divorce, bankruptcy, suicide, etc., for past couple of decades and that statistically there was no difference in the percentages if you were a Christian than if you weren't.

I was wondering how that could be. I haven't done any big study on this, but I was reading someone's story in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. She was one of the first women ever in A.A. She loved the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but couldn't get past the 'Higher Power' thing. One day she became very angry with some people and decided to show them by getting drunk again. This was when she had her spiritual awakening. In that moment she says that it made perfect sense to her. It wasn't about Religion. It was about freedom. Freedom to live.

Isn't that why Jesus came? Not so that I could be Evangelical Free and you could be Catholic, Methodist, Assembly of God, or Pentecostal. He came so that we could be free. I believe that the goal is to get back to that perfect relationship with God that existed in the Garden. I don't recall a lot of rules for Adam and Eve. Actually, there was just one. As soon as they broke that one rule God had a plan to get us back there; back to perfect communion with Him.

I'm always amazed at how an Alcoholic that has had no relationship with God, ever, gets it so much quicker than a "Christian" does. Maybe it is the desperation involved. However, I think that it revolves around maybe the greatest phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous, "The God of your understanding." I have a friend that said to me, "This is my God, you can't have Him. Find your own." He actually said it like a child with his favorite toy in hand. It really offended me, but later I understood what he was saying. Why would I want to worship the God of my friend's understanding? I have had a different life. I have been through different things. And, don't forget that God wants a unique, personal relationship with me. I guess that is why we are all so different, isn't it?

My Dad is a pastor and he gets a little fidgety when we start talking about "Higher Power" and "God of your understanding". The thing to remember is that I grew up knowing my Dad's God, not mine. I grew up understanding someone else's God and I ended up a drunk because that God couldn't possibly love me. He could forgive me, but only because he had too, not because he loved me.

James 4:8 tells us to draw close to God and He will draw close to us. It is personal. It is unique. The Big Book of A.A. says that if you draw near to God that he will reveal Himself to you. Now, who would you rather hear it from; God or me?

I since have found the God of my understanding. He is the God of the Bible that sent his son to die for me, but He is mine. You can't have Him. Go find Him for yourself.

Stay strong,

Johnny



Stumble It!

I am not really working the program

So, I am writing a friend back today about some recovery related issues and something hits me: I am not really working the program.

What! I am on the leadership team of a Mega Church's recovery ministry! How can I not be working a program.

So, I sit down and read through the steps:

• Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
• Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
• Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
• Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
• Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
• Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
• Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
• Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
• Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
• Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
• Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
• Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

After reading through the steps, guess what I found? I am working my own program. Guess what? It is not working very well.

I adhere to the 'Buffet' style of A.A., "Oh, I will take some of Step 1, a little bit of Step 4, but I am going to pass on Step 5 (I will get some of that on my next trip up). Oh look! They just brought out Step 8! Shoot, it is not prepared the way that I like it. I will just scoop out a smidgen of Step 11 and pass on Step 12 altogether."

I know that it sounds like I am being comical about this, but my heart is very heavy right now. I feel sad.

I emailed my sponsor tonight and told him that it was time to get back to the basics. Start working a program for real and not on my terms, but the way that it was intended to be worked; One day at a time, one step at a time.

Johnny

Stumble It!

I can't do it on my own

My is wife is going to kill me when she reads this, but I laid my motorcycle down today. It was not a big a deal. I was in a parking lot turning right and a truck with a very large trailer was turning towards me and didn't swing out wide enough...he was cutting off my path. If I had kept going his trailer would have hit me.

So, I hit the brakes, but broke the cardinal rule: Before you brake make sure that your motorcycle is not leaning. Well, the bike was leaning and, sure enough, it went right down.

Now, I have a Honda Shadow 1100. It is not a small bike. The owner's manual lists the bike at 678 pounds production weight. There are probably about 50 pounds of extras on it.

I tried. Lord knows that I tried hard to get that bike back up on two wheels. I am not a small guy, but I had no room to work. I was standing in wet grass just on the other side of a curb. I could not even budge it. The guy got out of the truck to help me. Even with both of us it was not that easy to get it back up on its wheels.

As I finished my ride into the office this morning I thought, "what if nobody had helped me?" Well, I would still be there. I am sure that I would have tried any number of a dozen different ways to try to remedy my situation, but I would have failed. Then it dawned on me that I handle most of my life that way; I do not ask for help. I either try different ways to fix my situation, I give up completely, or I try my best to forget about it.

Would it not be completely ridiculous for me to just leave my motorcycle siting in that parking lot rather than ask for help? However, if I am struggling with something like my emotions or my marriage I will try everything that I know then "walk away" from the problem.

In our recovery ministry meeting this past week we talked about "Hiding". I am a hider. I am the proverbial ostrich with its head stuck in the ground. It is weird. Some things I am as open as possible about and other things I just stay closed up on. I can not even really tell you why.

I believe that most of my problem is relationship based. I keep people pretty far away from me. I do not know why, but I am working on it. I do not have great friendships and part of me really hurts because of it. Plus, I know that I can't do this life on my own. I need your help.

Johnny

Stumble It!

Step 2: God, I don't know if you are up there....

We have all seen where the big hero of the movie is desperate. He, or someone that he loves, faces certain doom. On his knees, all sweaty, beaten, and bloodied he looks up and says, "Look, God or whoever you are, if you get me out of this I will never___________."

Here is something that you do not hear everyday about Hollywood: They got it right on this one!

Step 2 for you and I is no different from our humbled hero. He does not really acknowledge God; he does not even know who God is. He simply looks up and says if you are there please help me. That is Step 2.

You see, we have already tried everything that we can think of. Undoubtedly, our movie hero tried to shoot the bad guys, was probably in a car chase with the bad guys, tried his best karate moves on 6 or 7 of the bad guys at once, and still he came up short. He needed help. "I don't know if you are there, but if you are I need your help." I wonder how God feels when he hears that. I believe that my God is almost overwhelmed with joy when one of his kids says that.

Step 2 reads like this: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

People, there is no conversion here. There is no religion. There is no judgment. There is no punishment. This is just a person that has come to the end of a long rope and believes that if there is not a power greater than themselves out there, then they are screwed anyways, so they might as well give it a shot. The wonderful thing about desperate people is that when they give "something a shot" they typically go all out.

Don't kid yourself, A.A. is firmly rooted in Christianity, but you won't hear it talked about much in those rooms. Why not? The relationship is personal and unique. The relationship begins with a simple, "I don't know if you really exist..." Is that not how most relationships start out? First you get to know someone, then you start to trust them, then the love comes. It is no different with God.

So, it does not really matter where you are at with your Hurt, or your Habit, or your Hangup. According to Step 2, all that really matters is that you concede to the fact that there is something greater than you that can help you with these things. Whether you have a name for that "something greater" or not really does not matter.

We have tried to fix things ourselves, just like our movie hero, and we all end up in the same exact position; on our knees, bruised, and bloodied asking for help.

Johnny

I don’t live there anymore, but I do visit sometimes.

After finally finding the courage to stare yourself down and say, “I am going to change”, you dig deep and you change. It feels great. There is so much victory in no longer being a prisoner to yourself.

You coast along in your new found freedom. “Hey, that guy just cut me off and I am not mad! I cannot believe that I ever let the little stuff bother me.”

Then it happens.

That familiar feeling creeps back in and you react. On some level it feels great to release that emotion, but then comes the shame. “I thought I was done with that.”

In A.A. we say that it is all about “Progress, not Perfection”. That is the only way that we can live. Putting too much pressure on ourselves can have the opposite effect. Putting yourself under the microscope can cause you to fall further back into your old self.

When we fall back into our old ways, the best that we can do is to recognize it and move on. You may have to make some amends, but then you pull up your bootstraps and get back to work.

Often, I have to tell myself, that I am not really that guy anymore. Sure, I am going to make some mistakes and some old behavior will appear, but that doesn’t mean that I have failed. It just means that I am human.

Stay strong,

Johnny

Step 1: How can it help me? I'm not an alcoholic.

Step 1:
We admitted we were powerless over our Hurts, our Habits, and our Hang-ups,
that our lives had become unmanageable.

Is it not interesting that when you replace the word "alcohol" with the 3Hs (Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups) that meaning of the 1st Step starts to hit home?

We are all broken. The moment Eve took a bite of that apple everything changed. Now, we just try our best to get through it, but life has a way of throwing things at us that make it difficult to cope.

Most of us are raised in a fairly dysfunctional home, or maybe we went through some traumatic event when we were younger. During that time we found what worked for us; what got us through it all. A fair amount of the time, what got us through was not healthy, nor was it affective.

As we grew, we hung on to this coping method. We may have modified it some, but it is still recognizable. You may have the same exact way of dealing with things as you did when you were a kid. However, as I got older, I found something that worked better for me: Alcohol.

What most people don't realize is that had I chose something else, I'd be no better off. I might not have lost 5 years of my life to blackouts and poor decisions, but I still would have been coping instead of dealing.

Drinking was one of my Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups. What is yours? Anger? Laziness? Maybe you deal with everything by taking nothing seriously. Maybe spending money takes away the bad feelings you have after you get in a fight with your husband. Maybe you don't know how to handle the feeling of being overweight. I could go on a name an endless amount of things that you could be doing to deal with life. Things that are not healthy.

So, what are you powerless over? What has made your life unmanageable?

Fear not my fellow messed up brethren! There are 11 more steps helps you get your life back!

Johnny

God's Part, Our part

"We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us
what we could not do for ourselves."

One of the most exciting feelings that I get is when I "suddenly" realize that change has happened in my life. Typically is goes completely unnoticed by me until a familiar trigger comes my way and I do not want to react the way that always used to.

At the 180Xchange recovery ministry that I am involved in we always talk about God's Part and our part. When we concentrate on doing our part and let God do His part, low and behold, things change!

It is when I do my part and His part that life seems to fall apart. I am reminded of the Carrie Underwood song, "Jesus Take the Wheel". I would have written it just little differently, "Jesus Take the Wheel and then make my hands disappear so that I can not try to take it back from You." I know, I know, it's a little wordy, but it could work.

So many of us think that humility is such a horrible thing, but what humility does is remind us that we should never, "Take the Wheel." I wonder just how much of that is what sums up "Our Part."

I hated change before I got sober. Now it is my daily goal. There is no stress involved in it. It is actually fun for me. Some things change slower than others. Some things have not changed at all. That is okay with me. I have to think that my life is like a big game of Jenga. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are slowly pulling out each bad block. It is slow and sometimes I sway back and forth when the bad block does not want to come out and one of Them has to tug a little bit. So, if something in my life is not changing or it is just not happening fast enough for me, then it is because if that block was pulled out too soon the entire structure could come crumbling down. Maybe it is like that, maybe it is not, but either way I am going to let Them worry about that. I am just going to keep working on my daily conscious contact with God (my part) and let Him to the rest.

Stay strong and stay sober from whatever it is that you deal with: drugs, alcohol, sex, food, spending, TV, codependency...don't kid yourself, we are all broken and we all need recovery from something. If your church doesn't have an all encompassing recovery program...start one!

Johnny

Live Life on Life's Terms

My wife and I have been in a custody battle for her 11 year old son, Bailey. Kiley, my wife, gave up custody of her son while she was having a drug induced breakdown. She has regretted that decision ever since.

This past March we decided to go for custody because Bailey told us that he wanted to live with us. It is something that we had talked about for quite a while, but this pushed us over the edge. We hired a lawyer and started the process...the long, painful process.

I am not going to go through all the details and this certainly is not all about me, but I want share what I learned about myself through this: I can live life on life's terms.

It really only hit me about 3 weeks ago. I was thinking about how horrible the stress of this was. How worried I was about Kiley and how much I felt for Bailey. I have had a lot of sleepless nights. I have had a lot of bad days at work. I have been short with people. I have not eaten well. I missed too much church. However, not once did I think that I would be better off taking a drink.

Before sobriety, I simply was not cut out for living life. I could not cope with anything. The most mundane thing would stress me out and make me crave the feeling of cheap whiskey on my tongue. Since I stopped drinking and adopted a program for my life, I have gone through a divorce, had many financial hardships, had a brother in Afghanistan, and dealt with the loss of a custody trial. I never did drink. I don't even really recall struggling with it. My life may or may not suck right now, but it sucks much more when I drink.

We do not control life, but we can't let life control us either. I do not necessarily believe in, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I would rather say, "If life gives you lemon, don't get drunk."

No, we did not win the custody hearing, but I have to believe that God has a plan for Bailey's life that did not include him living with us right now. I am good with that.